i saw it again with k and i didn't think any more of it than i did the first time, which isn't that bad of a thing considering how terrific i found it. but what was interesting is how k saw it, which was significantly different from me. she put a good deal of emphasis on the flashback moments intimating severine's childhood sexual abuse, and the fairly clear evidence of her virginity and generally on how her relationship to sex is NOT HEALTHY, that her interest in getting roughed up is a worrying thing born of that childhood trauma. and this understanding is reinforced by the ending, in which the carriage is empty and you can understand it to mean that she's cured! that it's over! that healthy, conjugal relations can begin! and that is reasonable, compared with my understanding that this movie was about the supplement, the certain basis of happiness provided by a marriage and the other stuff that necessarily exists outside it, which doesn't really make sense when you think about how their marriage wasn't the proper thing by any standard, and her refusal to have sex, etc, and that now she's cured and can BEGIN having a proper marriage.
but that is so disappointing to me! that makes the movie into this psychoanalytic thing a la some of hitchcock's stuff like marnie where it's practically educational and literally clinical, rather than opening doors it's about reaffirming the properness of the present! and i don't think my initial understanding of the movie gets entirely discounted by that empty carriage at the end, by the idea that this movie's about a cure, but i just find that rather less progressive and intersting than what i was hoping for. la la la
Friday, April 29, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
want this to be over
it's raining out and the library is almost empty. i haven't been doing very well in school and, especially amidst all these people writing honors theses, i find this rather stressful. i mean it isn't that big a deal in part because i don't like what i'm doing, i don't like school anymore, and this isn't some kind of pathetic-recluse-failure thing, i'd rather be doing other things. writing things like that thing on miami, etc, which rpesents a whole new frontier for sadness and failure, but you never know. but anyway, this has required the difficult rejiggering of the things on which i base my sense of self. if i continue to see me as my gpa, etc, esp in contrast to the gpas of the marvelously successful people around me, it's all rather ugly and sad. and so i'm blustering through a disavowal of this whole school thing, of declaring myself misunderstood and underappreciated by the system, all kinds of the hazy angriness (blog thing is underlining this word as not being a word, is angriness not a word? i fucking hate when it underlines things, it distracts me enormously, when i write papers on people with funny names i spend an enormous amount of time adding them to word's dictionary which i suppose now has a fairly respectable catalogue of classical names like "alcmaeonidae" and "alcibiades." never stop learning, computer programs) i've associated with silly, rebellious teenagers with masturbation-fried dreams of piers and freedom.
anyway, stupid british lit profs and avant garde japanese cinema no longer have any sovereignty over me, i'm out of that stuffy backward land and into the bright future of rambling, self satisfied literary non fiction. that's what i'll do, i'll be. oh what an excellent man i am!
this felt nice.
anyway, stupid british lit profs and avant garde japanese cinema no longer have any sovereignty over me, i'm out of that stuffy backward land and into the bright future of rambling, self satisfied literary non fiction. that's what i'll do, i'll be. oh what an excellent man i am!
this felt nice.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
AMERICA ALLEN GINSBERG
THAT IS SUCH A FUNNY, WRY, TRAGIC, HOPEFul, critical, schizophrenic poem
what a fucking great poem. i have never read anything so funny, so bemused, so perplexed at how america's "libraries are full of tears"
what an excellent thing what a most great thing.
what a fucking great poem. i have never read anything so funny, so bemused, so perplexed at how america's "libraries are full of tears"
what an excellent thing what a most great thing.
clark walk
I just went for the most incredible walk. I walked from Prince Arthur and Clark all the way up to Arcade and Clark where it ends and curves off to the left across the highway. It was such a fucking beautiful walk. Above all, it was beautiful because of the sky. The sky, I kept thinking for some reason, was like the Gatorade flavor ice. It was grey and silvery and powerful, looking at the clouds you could believe that lightning gets formed in those dense puffs, they looked like the stuff from which the hands of gods are made.
I’m in K's house and N is in his room making funny noises, every now and then he laughs so suddenly and abruptly that it sounds like a violent hiccup. I really want to go see what he’s doing, but he had sturdy headphones on when I came in that make you feel the privacy of not being able to hear yourself. If I came in, it’d probably be a bit of a shock, maybe as if he’d been bellowing his secret amusement like the way I talk much too loudly when I blast my music in the library. He literally forgot himself, felt too loudly. What a wonderful thing, a terrible thing to interrupt
Clark is a phenomenally beautiful street, but what I remember best is just after it ended, in that awkward shape around rue Arcade. There was a fat brick of a building in front of me, just beneath the quicksilver elephant sky, and on top of it was a fat, squatting water tower. It looked like a water bug, but also something to worship. Off to the right, across the highway, were two NDP billboards featuring Jack Layton with blurry, photoshopped features. It is difficult to express how crazy and appropriate they were, as if one of those quicksilver elephants had assimilated itself into the rigid dimensions of the earth and launched a political campaign straight out of the sky, as if the transition from sky creature to Canadian party boss was a bit hazy, but that would only add to the mythos.
Later, after I met K and gave her flowers that are also called Protea, that I had carried with such clumsy delicacy on this very windy evening, like a sea captain who had to take his little girl whale hunting (unfortunate custody battle) when she should have been skipping rope and who ached with impotence when she got lashed by the waves and rigging. It is horrible to have your flowers hurled and jerked by the wind, we saw some Hasidic ritual. There were about 50 men, dressed in that black, formal garb, marching in ovals and singing. It was a beautiful sound. There are a lot of Hasidim in Kira’s neighborhood, and I always see them individually, walking purposefully somewhere or another following rhythms of life I do not know. I remembered that Shabbat was Friday night because of the bizarre number of them on the street at hours I felt didn’t befit religious observance. Seeing all of them in this parking lot, circling, was like stumbling on an exquisite ant colony after so many in isolation, and all the more like an ant colony for how symphonic and wondrous it was. Concentrated, their eccentricity was totally magical. Overlooking the marching men were half a dozen little boys standing on a fire escape staircase that descended the wall above them. Unlike the men, the staircase was lit up and the variety of the light made me want to invoke painters of whom I know nothing but their names if only to express how historical and uncommon the moment was, how worthy it was of the talent of centuries if they would deign to be alive.
I’m in K's house and N is in his room making funny noises, every now and then he laughs so suddenly and abruptly that it sounds like a violent hiccup. I really want to go see what he’s doing, but he had sturdy headphones on when I came in that make you feel the privacy of not being able to hear yourself. If I came in, it’d probably be a bit of a shock, maybe as if he’d been bellowing his secret amusement like the way I talk much too loudly when I blast my music in the library. He literally forgot himself, felt too loudly. What a wonderful thing, a terrible thing to interrupt
Clark is a phenomenally beautiful street, but what I remember best is just after it ended, in that awkward shape around rue Arcade. There was a fat brick of a building in front of me, just beneath the quicksilver elephant sky, and on top of it was a fat, squatting water tower. It looked like a water bug, but also something to worship. Off to the right, across the highway, were two NDP billboards featuring Jack Layton with blurry, photoshopped features. It is difficult to express how crazy and appropriate they were, as if one of those quicksilver elephants had assimilated itself into the rigid dimensions of the earth and launched a political campaign straight out of the sky, as if the transition from sky creature to Canadian party boss was a bit hazy, but that would only add to the mythos.
Later, after I met K and gave her flowers that are also called Protea, that I had carried with such clumsy delicacy on this very windy evening, like a sea captain who had to take his little girl whale hunting (unfortunate custody battle) when she should have been skipping rope and who ached with impotence when she got lashed by the waves and rigging. It is horrible to have your flowers hurled and jerked by the wind, we saw some Hasidic ritual. There were about 50 men, dressed in that black, formal garb, marching in ovals and singing. It was a beautiful sound. There are a lot of Hasidim in Kira’s neighborhood, and I always see them individually, walking purposefully somewhere or another following rhythms of life I do not know. I remembered that Shabbat was Friday night because of the bizarre number of them on the street at hours I felt didn’t befit religious observance. Seeing all of them in this parking lot, circling, was like stumbling on an exquisite ant colony after so many in isolation, and all the more like an ant colony for how symphonic and wondrous it was. Concentrated, their eccentricity was totally magical. Overlooking the marching men were half a dozen little boys standing on a fire escape staircase that descended the wall above them. Unlike the men, the staircase was lit up and the variety of the light made me want to invoke painters of whom I know nothing but their names if only to express how historical and uncommon the moment was, how worthy it was of the talent of centuries if they would deign to be alive.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
studying
in reading the readings i did not read for the class discussions for which they were topical, i'm now realizing that the people i thought were having incredible insights were actually just people who read the readings. this is so silly, i mean, no shit, read what the person who has thought about this subject for decades has to say. what sophomoric nonsense for me to think i can watch a scene out of a movie i have never seen and have read nothing about and expect to say novel things, interesting things, anything worth hearing? life is so simple sometimes.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
having dignity
it's funny how having power in this world is the power to ignore other people. the most wretched thing about homelessness is how you can't distill your social interactions down to the ones you want to have, you have to be open to everyone. this is literalized, of course, in the case of the homeless person because they are ON THE STREET, but it puts having a door in a new perspective. as much as it's about keeping out the weather and other dangerous things, it's about having the ability to shut the door on that which you don't like, to make them unseen. the more powerful you are in the world, the more doors both literal (in your large house? THREE different bathroom doors to slam?) and figurative you'll have to close on people.
I was thinking of this because of ipods, and their headphones in particular. headphones are a kind of door we can carry everywhere. HA! you know how people sometimes just DO NOT hear you despite yelling at them comically and embarrassingly loudly? we always excuse that kind of thing, for our own sake, as just loud music. But i wonder if someone has pulled that shit with no music at all, just embracing their right to not talk to you if they don't want to. headphones are a symbol of impunity to ignore other people. anyway, this is terrible for so many reasons. but as it relates to this social distillation, it's terrible because it empowers everyone to wield that dubious power, to take comfort in the sense of superiority that comes from having rejected other people. but it's an ultimately hollow one, being in that house with 30 doors gets rather stagnant, and to stretch the metaphor, one gets a draught from opening them strategically. how terrible that in public we should have that right to that solitary dignity, a dignity which is really just a way of declaring your loneliness purposeful.
there is a boy sitting across from me with an exquisite little face and fancifully swoopy hair. what a pretty little person. he has a budding mustache but it's so small that it's pretty too.
I was thinking of this because of ipods, and their headphones in particular. headphones are a kind of door we can carry everywhere. HA! you know how people sometimes just DO NOT hear you despite yelling at them comically and embarrassingly loudly? we always excuse that kind of thing, for our own sake, as just loud music. But i wonder if someone has pulled that shit with no music at all, just embracing their right to not talk to you if they don't want to. headphones are a symbol of impunity to ignore other people. anyway, this is terrible for so many reasons. but as it relates to this social distillation, it's terrible because it empowers everyone to wield that dubious power, to take comfort in the sense of superiority that comes from having rejected other people. but it's an ultimately hollow one, being in that house with 30 doors gets rather stagnant, and to stretch the metaphor, one gets a draught from opening them strategically. how terrible that in public we should have that right to that solitary dignity, a dignity which is really just a way of declaring your loneliness purposeful.
there is a boy sitting across from me with an exquisite little face and fancifully swoopy hair. what a pretty little person. he has a budding mustache but it's so small that it's pretty too.
the cave
i'm in the large computer room behind the elevators surrounded by other students staring into computers. it's very early, and i wonder how many of them have been here all night. you can do that now. there's a guy sitting next to me who swaggered over blasting michael jackson on headphones audible 6 feet away. he has a particularly, blank, saliva-dripping expression on his face with his lower lip curled helpfully like the pouring lip of a beaker (i just tried to find if there was a word for the pouring part of some kind of vessel, and apparently there is no better way of describing it than "pouring lip"). he is playing some sort of racing tetris game with two different columns and many neon colors flashing. his fingers are knobby with effort, keyboard claws. there are several bright yellow ladders in this massive room with men in blue jumpsuits fiddling around in the ceiling. occasionally they drill things and everyone sleepily looks over. silence is a right to be protected and fought for. tetris man just left. it is so vividly comical to have the heads of those jumpsuited workers in the ceiling while ours, those of students, are staring here.
i'm getting out of this place! I CANNOT WAIT TO GRADUATE! I CONSTANTLY FEEL AS IF SOMEONE IS PLUCKING TINY HAIRS FROM MY BODY! I had a nightmare last night about school, which has almost never happened to me (except for last term when I had a recurring one that I was taking a german class and it was the end of the term and I spoke no german). I got another paper back from hepburn who wrote "you have no respect for words" or something like that, something so sprawlingly mean that i remember thinking in the dream that i wanted to write and that this teacher, in his meanness, had encroached on my private life and dreams in his zealous hate. horrible.
i'm getting out of this place! I CANNOT WAIT TO GRADUATE! I CONSTANTLY FEEL AS IF SOMEONE IS PLUCKING TINY HAIRS FROM MY BODY! I had a nightmare last night about school, which has almost never happened to me (except for last term when I had a recurring one that I was taking a german class and it was the end of the term and I spoke no german). I got another paper back from hepburn who wrote "you have no respect for words" or something like that, something so sprawlingly mean that i remember thinking in the dream that i wanted to write and that this teacher, in his meanness, had encroached on my private life and dreams in his zealous hate. horrible.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
"stats"
this is no good. there is a button on this blog that i can click when i log in called stats and it tells me how many people are reading this blog, this journal, these private ramblings, what country they're in and some other nonsense like that. i don't know who they (you) are but i have started to find their mysterious perusals meaningful. i am pleased when there are a lot of them. that is to say, when there are around 15 of them, but that still means that somehow, and for some mysterious reason, people are reading what is written here. this was never my intention with this thing, i meant for it to be my private journal, and it's super mind blowing to me that anyone ever found it. on campus once, a friend of mine named tom told me that he had read this blog thing. now i don't know tom very well. and though he very pleasant, i wouldn't go out of my way to tell him about writing i was doing on relationship insecurities and any number of other private things. anyway, his girlfriend had apparently somehow stumbled on it on the internet. ON THE INTERNET! how do people do these things? how do people find these things?
i don't want to have stats, to know whether or not this is amusing someone using internet explorer in india, because then i probably won't write as freely, because i'll peg my sense of self to the utter mystery, the terrifying anonymity of google. what a cruel and capricious thing. then again it might simply make sense, i might as well get used to people judging the things i do in a very distant and unknowable way, i do want to write after all and i do want it to be read so i might as well get used to trying to please those that might do that reading. but that that readership i might hope to please rises out of this statistical sea, this most bizarre sea, is awfully awfully weird. who are these (you) people? how can someone (me) be made to care, to love such MEANINGLESS numbers. i have thought a lot about numbers, about how statistical appraisals of our lives and behavior are probably the key to us living better, that if someone could graph our water usage or something like that that we might then feel competition with ourselves and an urge to do better, la da da, but when it comes to me and this little blog thing, i find it rather anxious-making and enormously strange. to whom am i trying to appeal? this makes me think of my mother. she has a web series and one of the episodes has a vaguely erotic sounding name to it and the thumbnail is of a woman dressed not indecently, but in some kind of negligee. and that episode has the most hits of any of her stuff, many of them from the UAE and Saudi Arabia and the like. Which is stupendously depressing.
basically, it's just about the absurdity of trying to appeal to an "audience" (that is hardly the right word) which, on any given day, may include a dozen readers in india. how can that not but contort you absurdly, make you silly in trying to do right by such a system? self worth is so bound up with other people, humans are fundamentally social creatures, but in a modern situation like this one should have a right to know who is responsible for sculpting that self worth
i played chess with y and it was wonderful because i beat him thoroughly three times. a shellacking.
i don't want to have stats, to know whether or not this is amusing someone using internet explorer in india, because then i probably won't write as freely, because i'll peg my sense of self to the utter mystery, the terrifying anonymity of google. what a cruel and capricious thing. then again it might simply make sense, i might as well get used to people judging the things i do in a very distant and unknowable way, i do want to write after all and i do want it to be read so i might as well get used to trying to please those that might do that reading. but that that readership i might hope to please rises out of this statistical sea, this most bizarre sea, is awfully awfully weird. who are these (you) people? how can someone (me) be made to care, to love such MEANINGLESS numbers. i have thought a lot about numbers, about how statistical appraisals of our lives and behavior are probably the key to us living better, that if someone could graph our water usage or something like that that we might then feel competition with ourselves and an urge to do better, la da da, but when it comes to me and this little blog thing, i find it rather anxious-making and enormously strange. to whom am i trying to appeal? this makes me think of my mother. she has a web series and one of the episodes has a vaguely erotic sounding name to it and the thumbnail is of a woman dressed not indecently, but in some kind of negligee. and that episode has the most hits of any of her stuff, many of them from the UAE and Saudi Arabia and the like. Which is stupendously depressing.
basically, it's just about the absurdity of trying to appeal to an "audience" (that is hardly the right word) which, on any given day, may include a dozen readers in india. how can that not but contort you absurdly, make you silly in trying to do right by such a system? self worth is so bound up with other people, humans are fundamentally social creatures, but in a modern situation like this one should have a right to know who is responsible for sculpting that self worth
i played chess with y and it was wonderful because i beat him thoroughly three times. a shellacking.
Friday, April 8, 2011
BELLE DE JOUR
SUCH a random happy thing to see that movie! Took K to the bus because she was going home to study and feeling overwhelmed with work and doesn't necessarily work well when I'm around and, in walking home, went into cinema du parc on a whim. and since it happened to be 9 there were movies playing and belle de jour was one of them. what a fantastic coincidence! some writer gave a little talk before the movie that had nothing to do with the movie, he had this voice that made me think of all the saliva in his mouth, not a bad voice, just one that reminded me of his saliva. he gave a self aggrandizing talk about taking his son out of high school because he felt he was watching him die there. he reminded everyone of how unnatural it is to force kids at the most energetic moment of their lives to sit in chairs for hours every day, and i suppose that is an important thing to remember. and that it shouldn't be a medical condition to not be able to tolerate that kind of thing; his son DOESN'T have ADD, there is nothing wrong with him, school just wasn't for him.
but belle de jour! catherine deneuve has a perfect face for that role, like so much pale, pale marble. what a disconcerting but happy idea about relationships, it's funny how much it reminded me of dan savage's advice column. i guess it is unnatural to think that all our sexual selves should be invested in one person for the rest of our lives, and that it is such a healthy and necessary thing for many people to find something outside of that. That such a measure is not a rejection of a spouse, only an admission that we contain multitudes.
that he ends up in that coma is so brilliantly funny, my god that is so funny and appropriate. but i'm also glad that bunuel didn't leave it on that note, that he didn't put forth such a crude notion of what her happiness would constitute. ah! he only symbolically confronted the communication between the two of them, because to literalize that would have strained our belief and added such intensity and drama to a movie that would not have been able to handle it.
i think it's disappointing that he included those scenes in the beginning of the handyman touching her, that adds such a crass, freudian angle to a story that is really, at least for me, about how normal her situation is and should be seen to be. but wow, what a fantastic movie, what excellent bright thoughts that gives me about the future of my romantic life, about the happy compromises we will have to make, that the monogamy of our lives is not armageddon.
i hate that actor that played marcel, and i thought he was quite unconvincing in the role. he's in so many movies playing an effete lunatic.
there is also a lot in that movie about the fantasies of men and women that would also be interesting to explore. because some of the stuff she liked and what men liked to do to her made me unhappy. maybe that's just because s&m stuff remains so far beyond the pale for me, so inscrutable and bizarre, but to sanction that kind of violence seems terrible even if it is honest. so many thoughts so many thoughts i don't want to forget that movie, not ever
but belle de jour! catherine deneuve has a perfect face for that role, like so much pale, pale marble. what a disconcerting but happy idea about relationships, it's funny how much it reminded me of dan savage's advice column. i guess it is unnatural to think that all our sexual selves should be invested in one person for the rest of our lives, and that it is such a healthy and necessary thing for many people to find something outside of that. That such a measure is not a rejection of a spouse, only an admission that we contain multitudes.
that he ends up in that coma is so brilliantly funny, my god that is so funny and appropriate. but i'm also glad that bunuel didn't leave it on that note, that he didn't put forth such a crude notion of what her happiness would constitute. ah! he only symbolically confronted the communication between the two of them, because to literalize that would have strained our belief and added such intensity and drama to a movie that would not have been able to handle it.
i think it's disappointing that he included those scenes in the beginning of the handyman touching her, that adds such a crass, freudian angle to a story that is really, at least for me, about how normal her situation is and should be seen to be. but wow, what a fantastic movie, what excellent bright thoughts that gives me about the future of my romantic life, about the happy compromises we will have to make, that the monogamy of our lives is not armageddon.
i hate that actor that played marcel, and i thought he was quite unconvincing in the role. he's in so many movies playing an effete lunatic.
there is also a lot in that movie about the fantasies of men and women that would also be interesting to explore. because some of the stuff she liked and what men liked to do to her made me unhappy. maybe that's just because s&m stuff remains so far beyond the pale for me, so inscrutable and bizarre, but to sanction that kind of violence seems terrible even if it is honest. so many thoughts so many thoughts i don't want to forget that movie, not ever
Thursday, April 7, 2011
teaching english
i finished another class with adil at la maison de l'amitie, and it is often such a bizarre experience. teaching english estranges me from it, when i am asked to explain why "i have been left" is wrong but not "i have been gone," everything starts to sound wrong. the insane grammar i somehow internalized as a child starts leaking out of me, nipping at my sense of linguistic truth. its a kind of schizophrenia being with those students. There are people who became so cripplingly conscious of their tongue's acrobatics that they can no longer speak. i occasionally feel that way in class, as if i've been a priest giving a sermon in latin, or maybe as if i was a wizard who'd been casting spells all my life and suddenly realize i don't believe in or understand magic. what insanity when you can't take anything for granted, if we had to interrogate and justify the grammaticality of every sentence.
i have returned to blackader and i am so tired.
i have returned to blackader and i am so tired.
jundt's class
that was a really excellent and saddening class. Learning about the US governmet's lies during the Cold War, about the radiation dangers that were never admitted, about the 25% of sheep in several North Western states that died after one test detonation, deaths that the government claimed had been caused by a "cold snap." "If only they had had wool sweaters" said Jundt in that whiny dead pan of his that must come from saying so many depressing and true things. So many unfortunate things. What a terrific professor. If only i didn't need to finish this research paper for his class, i have to try to get it done by the end of the day.
http://www.theawl.com/2011/04/inside-david-foster-wallaces-private-self-help-library if anyone did not yet know that david foster wallace was a breathtakingly wonderful person or needed a life-affirming reminder
back to work! i'm in the fishbowl!
http://www.theawl.com/2011/04/inside-david-foster-wallaces-private-self-help-library if anyone did not yet know that david foster wallace was a breathtakingly wonderful person or needed a life-affirming reminder
back to work! i'm in the fishbowl!
Sunday, April 3, 2011
fromage feta leger, olives noir, olives vert, olives kalamata, yogurt 2%, feves blanc, huile d'olive vierage extra,chapellure, ail, poivre, sel de mer
who writes on a blog but in the darkest moments? that you can't really see a computer screen in sunlight is a good way of thinking about how my updates correlate strongly with my unhappiness. terrific!
i have eaten many roasted almonds, much dip from marche lobo with pita. i was excited once earlier, frolicked on campus briefly and climbed on things and pretended i was a cat. you know the way vultures circle ominously on sultry days before they tuck in to their maggoty carrion? must be funny to be a vulture, is there anything so lazy? isn't it a miracle anything hunts anything living at all? what kind of lunatic chases after something that can run away?
when you think about it though, actual predators really aren't that different. killing the magnificent elk, triumphing over the fine specimen is a uniquely human fixation. wolves and lions and things are all about the old and the young and the weak and the unsteady, there're no scruples about low-hanging fruit. herbivores are the really smart ones, plants are pretty obliging and you don't even have to wait for them to die! if some herbivore could simply get some sharp teeth, something that would make them not a victim (aren't they always the victim?), they would be unstoppable; the ultimate leisure creatures. mind is wandering.
i have eaten many roasted almonds, much dip from marche lobo with pita. i was excited once earlier, frolicked on campus briefly and climbed on things and pretended i was a cat. you know the way vultures circle ominously on sultry days before they tuck in to their maggoty carrion? must be funny to be a vulture, is there anything so lazy? isn't it a miracle anything hunts anything living at all? what kind of lunatic chases after something that can run away?
when you think about it though, actual predators really aren't that different. killing the magnificent elk, triumphing over the fine specimen is a uniquely human fixation. wolves and lions and things are all about the old and the young and the weak and the unsteady, there're no scruples about low-hanging fruit. herbivores are the really smart ones, plants are pretty obliging and you don't even have to wait for them to die! if some herbivore could simply get some sharp teeth, something that would make them not a victim (aren't they always the victim?), they would be unstoppable; the ultimate leisure creatures. mind is wandering.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
doodoodoo
the green light that usually only turns on when i use the video camera on my computer has been on and i can't get it to turn off. the abstract idea that someone might be looking at me through that camera, that that little light is actually the signifier of thinking, living scrutiny is very disconcerting. like the way excessively alive machines like HAL or the robot that goes rogue in this mars movie (red planet? maybe?) can act and move but without your being able to discern WHY they do anything that they do. that opacity is extremely frightening because it makes the thing entirely unknown and without limits, if you can't see inside it, analyze the basis on which it founds its actions, then you can't anticipate what it'll do. Like, that the US doesn't disclose its "enhanced interrogation techniques" has as much to do with preventing people from training to resist them as with letting those "techniques" be as horrifying in peoples' minds as their imaginations can conjure. by that same token, the blankness of machine eyes make me assume the worst. But then, if i think about it more literally, that there could be someone watching me sit in blackader, furrowing my brows and dirtying my keyboard with couscous, giggling stupidly to myself and spending a lot of time gazing wistfully out the window (to my left, showing off my right cheek to this keeking peeper (i was just looking up exactly what keen means, and having typed out "kee" the word "keek" sprang up, which is a really funny word and bizarrely topical)), i remember that my privacy is meaningful to me only in theory. If someone really wants to be watching me do these things then i cannot but smile at the obscure and wonderfully diverse hobbies that exist in this extravagantly peculiar world. i mean, i don't have breasts -- if plain old arousal/masturbation was at work here (which it is not, i must not flatter myself) that would be altogether too normal to deserve my sponsorship and complicity. but if it's really to watch me wrinkle my nose now and then, that is too silly to deny.
Friday, April 1, 2011
april 1st, 2011
it's squinty weather, light wet snow is flying fast, although none of it is sticking. it's winter's last gasp, his last spittle, trying to make us cover our heads and lower our eyes in that posture of devotion we've kept for so many months. there's an irreverent joy to being outside without a hood or a hat, to disrespecting that angry god of montreal's winter, now finally melting, wilting into so much mud.
i love the phrase "acrobatic loyalties." brilliant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogwksftPfa8 is a terrific, subtle song
i finally filled up that red notebook!
the light coming through my curtain has an eery glow, like a shower curtain behind which you expect to find something gruesome, or a silent portal to the afterlife, still and terrifying. which is kind of like what a dead person in a bath tub would be, also.
i will now eat a peanut butter sandwich.
.
i love the phrase "acrobatic loyalties." brilliant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogwksftPfa8 is a terrific, subtle song
i finally filled up that red notebook!
the light coming through my curtain has an eery glow, like a shower curtain behind which you expect to find something gruesome, or a silent portal to the afterlife, still and terrifying. which is kind of like what a dead person in a bath tub would be, also.
i will now eat a peanut butter sandwich.
.